1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a wiper device that wipes ink or other fluid from the nozzle face of a fluid ejection head, to a fluid ejection device, and to a wiping method.
2. Related Art
Inkjet printers are one type of fluid ejection device having a fluid ejection head for ejecting ink or other fluid. Ink and foreign matter such as paper dust may accumulate on the nozzle face of the inkjet head (fluid ejection head) in an inkjet printer. One method of the related art used to prevent problems caused by the accretion of such matter on the nozzle face is to wipe the nozzle face with the edge of a wiper blade made from rubber or other elastic material to remove the accretion.
JP-A-2001-30507 describes a device having a wiper for each nozzle head in an inkjet printer having four nozzle heads that eject different colors of ink. Each wiper is mounted on a wiper carrier, and a wiper moving means is provided for each wiper carrier. Each wiper moving means can be driven independently. The nozzle heads that need wiping can therefore be wiped selectively.
JP-A-2011-104979 describes an inkjet printer having plural maintenance units corresponding to plural heads. A wiper unit and a drive mechanism for the wiper unit are mounted on each maintenance unit. The technology described in JP-A-2011-104979 enables selectively wiping plural heads by independently driving the plural maintenance units.
JP-A-2014-43026 describes an inkjet printer with plural heads that has fewer wipers than the number of heads. The inkjet printer taught in JP-A-2014-43026 wipes four heads with two wipers by moving a carriage carrying the four heads relative to the two wipers. As a result, plural heads can be selectively wiped using fewer wipers than the number of heads.
To selectively wipe plural heads (nozzle heads) as described in JP-A-2001-30507 and JP-A-2011-104979, the related art provides a wiper for each head and independently drives the wipers to wipe the heads. However, devices that have an actuator for each wiper require more parts and have a complicated construction, and are therefore difficult to make small. Furthermore, because an inkjet printer with line heads has large head units with many nozzles, segmenting a single head unit into plural nozzle groups for wiping is desirable. However, because this further increases the number of wipers and actuators, the number of parts also increases and the size increases.
In contrast to the above, JP-A-2011-104979 discloses a printer that can selectively wipe plural heads using a configuration with fewer wipers than heads by moving a carriage relative to the wipers. However, while this construction enables reducing the size of the wiper device by reducing the number of wipers, it requires a mechanism for moving the carriage relative to the wipers. More specifically, to move the carriage from the print position to the maintenance position to wipe the heads, a mechanism for moving the carriage relative to the wipers is needed in addition to the mechanism for moving the carriage between the print position and the maintenance position. A complex carriage moving mechanism is therefore required, making it difficult to reduce the size of the device.
Furthermore, selectively wiping plural heads takes a long time if wiper operation is slow. Shortening the wiper operating time is therefore also desirable.